It Wouldn't Be a Trump Appointee Without a Conflict of Interest

We’ve been keeping up with Neil Gorsuch, the peripatetic Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court last seen in the undesirable company of Mitch McConnell down in Kentucky. As it happens, on Thursday, he is scheduled to address something called the Fund For American Studies’ (“Teaching Freedom Since 1967!”) at its Defending Freedom luncheon. Is TFAS—founded by one of Thomas Edison’s sons with help from, among other people, William F. Buckley, Jr.—one of those intellectual cubicle farms that produce the next generation of Paul Ryans? You bet it is.

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However, just for the moment, let’s set aside the propriety of Mr. Justice Gorsuch’s still hangin’ and bangin’ with his buddies from the wingnut welfare circuit and concentrate instead on where the luncheon will be held. As is customary, according to USA Today, it will be held at a luxury Washington hotel.

The Trump International Hotel.

"A Trump appointee speaking at a Trump hotel as the court considers a Trump case unnecessarily invites reproach of our sole functioning branch of government and hurts its legitimacy," Gabe Roth of Fix The Court said. "Justices should not only seek out less controversial venues, they should also try to address ideologically diverse groups, as the impact of seeing the country's leading jurists appear before contrarian audiences would go far beyond whatever words they'd share." Since the news first broke about the speech, groups have called on Gorsuch to cancel.

In addition, cases against the president* charging that he is violating the Emoluments clause of the Constitution are winding their way through the judicial system as we speak. All of these cases involve the ownership of the hotel at which Gorsuch is giving his speech. Theoretically, anyway, he could end up ruling on one or more of them. He plainly doesn’t care, and this kind of airy dismissal of the rules that bind other judges was fully on display during his confirmation hearings.

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One letter, sent in late August, cited the code of conduct for U.S. judges: "A judge 'should maintain and enforce high standards of conduct and should personally observe those standards, so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary may be preserved.'"

That is not for Neil Gorsuch, man of the world. Not for him.

And, once he gets back to his day job, he likely will be the fifth vote on the Court in favor of the decimation of public-employee unions. From the LA Times:

Early last year, the court’s conservatives were poised to strike down these so-called “fair share” fees in a suit brought by a California schoolteacher. But Justice Antonia Scalia died unexpectedly in February, leaving the court split 4-4 and unable to decide the case of Friedrichs vs. the California Teachers Assn. Now, the court has agreed to hear a new case presenting the same issue. And this time, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch can — and most likely will — supply the fifth vote for a conservative ruling.

Every morning, I give thanks that war-mongering neoliberal Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her questionable data-management, is not our president. Neil Gorsuch is going to be, among other things, the longest lasting legacy of a very bad election. He’s going to leave a lot of people by the side of the road to freeze in their trucks.